BABY ON BOARD


luke squirms over ethics.

Now where have I seen this look...



(courtesy of Steve Mellon's wonderful Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photo)

...before?

Let me think.

On the face of one of my nineteen-year-old students when he wants me to believe that yes, his grandmother's boyfriend's dog really did eat his last assignment, and no, he really couldn't email it to me because his roommate's mother's cousin forgot to pay their DSL bill? On the face of my thirteen-year-old, when he wants me to believe that yes, he really did turn in that permission slip, and no, he really didn't just slap his brother in the back of the head? On the face of my seven-year-old, when he wants me to believe that yes, he really did listen to everything his teacher told him today, and no, he really didn't just punch his brother in the butt? On all of the above?

Now here it is again -- all the more inexplicably, and so much less excusably -- on the face of my twenty-seven-year-old mayor when he wants the city Ethics Hearing Board to believe that yes, his participation in that golf tournament was perfectly legitimate, and no, he was not the beneficiary of that $9,000 contribution, even though it bought him a $9,000 spot and a dinner and a gift bag and a couple tee times he otherwise would not have had at the Mario Lemieux Hobnobbing and Celebrity Stalking Invitational.

We can only hope that Ethics Board Chair Sister Patrice Hughes has some experience -- and as a nun, she ought to -- with recalcitrant little boys who say one thing and do another, who think the rules do not apply to them, and who do not seem troubled by the slightest bits of conscience or compunction when caught treating city ethics codes the way frat boys treat drunken co-eds. Sister Patrice almost certainly will not fail our young mayor -- though she should -- and she likely does not have the jurisdiction to ground him or to take away his GameBoy. But here's hoping that she and her esteemed colleagues do not fall for his holy-as-thou choir-boy schtick and give him a good little dose of public shame and discipline.

For starters, I'd suggest a couple of good raps on the knuckles -- with a wooden ruler, or maybe a 9-iron -- and then a nice, long stint up at the City-County chalkboard, writing I will follow the rules as if they were Tiger Woods at Oakmont a few hundred times, until both hands cramp into positions from which it is impossible either to look for a handout or to ask for an autograph.

Posted: Tue - August 21, 2007 at 04:41 PM          

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